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What to Know to Hunt for Viruses

What do you need to know to hunt for viruses in water near you? 
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All living things propagate through sets of instructions encoded in deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA). Scientists have started to look for this DNA in the environment—environmental DNA or eDNA—as a way to study what’s around. Read on to learn more about what scientists look for on the hunt for viruses and other microbes in environmental samples.

 

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A schematic of environmental nucleic acid (NA) collection, isolation, and analysis that essentially provides a pixelated view of the environment that was sampled
Nucleic acids are all around us
Full Nucleic acids are all around us
Full Nucleic acids are all around us

Nucleic acid sequences are the recipes that build and maintain all living things over time. Sometimes scientists look for these sequences as hints at the types of living things in a particular environment and what they’re up to:

What’s cooking?

Environmental nucleic acids

Organisms are constantly shedding nucleic acids: DNA and RNA. That’s because their cells are continually eating and creating waste, performing complex metabolic functions for their survival by switching DNA genes on and off, or eventually “turning over” which is what scientists say when they mean that cells have been growing, dividing, and dying. While only RNA can be made while a cell or organism is alive, DNA is much more stable and can persist for long after an organism has moved on from an environment. In an ecosystem, the collective DNA or RNA that can be measured contains an immense amount of information on what an ecosystem is up to and how healthy it is without focusing on any one organism. For this reason, we call this type of nucleic acid, environmental DNA (eDNA) or environmental RNA (eRNA).

Full Nucleic acids are all around us

Created by

Joseph Luna Joseph Luna avatar

Joe is an RNA scientist who is enamored of tiny self-replicating biological machines
Research Associate, Rice Lab
The Rockefeller University
Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry, School of Medicine
Case Western Reserve University
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